Archive for June, 2009

Not evil in the sense of being wrong, or that people who exhibit gay pride eat puppy-and-baby salads with non-organic French dressing, or anything else that Pat Robertson would say. It’s just that Chicago’s Pride Parade was held today, and while our rehearsal site* isn’t strictly located along the parade route, it’s within a couple of blocks.

The Pride Parade is a major event, with huge crowds. Just getting to rehearsal today was a bit of a tricky thing, particularly for the cast members who have to take Clark Street to get there.

I suppose it would be more accurate to say that enormous crowds standing between us and where we want to go are evil, but that’s less catchy. Plus this way, perhaps we’ll create a huge controversy that drives people to the site, where they then realize that 3LR does not believe Gay Pride is evil in a bad way, and become our best friends. (3LR does believe Gay Pride is Evil, but that’s a good thing — like when Motley Fool calls actions that are smart “Foolish”.)

Once we actually got to rehearsal, there were plenty of positive developments. We’re ahead of schedule on learning lines–our official off-book day isn’t until next Tuesday, but we were able to run two of the scenes we worked today without scripts, and the other three are close.

We worked the same sketches as last time, plus one called OnStar, which takes place in a Ford Taurus and gives Derick the opportunity to whip out his Scottish accent. His father is Scottish, and certainly could drive a Ford Taurus if given the opportunity, so it’s an homage. Because family… is Evil.

* We rehearse at Johnny O’Hagan’s, at 3374 N. Clark. While our rehearsals are in a closed room (i.e., you can’t come and watch), O’Hagan’s is an awesome Irish pub with really good food, and you should go there to eat and drink.

Our rehearsals for Front for Evil are, at least until we get closer to opening night, Tuesdays and Sundays. Which means that most of our updates will be coming shortly after those days.

So far, we’ve had three or four full rehearsals with our director Jay, and we’re making good progress on the initial run-throughs and refinements of our sketches. Yesterday we worked:

The Dorkflirting Sketch: Not the real name of the sketch, but the actual name would be a bit spoilery. And in fact, the dorkflirting isn’t even a particularly prominent part of the scene. It will, however, be a memorable part of it — a few of the discoveries we made will ensure that.

The Stumps: Another sketch that’s going to be awfully memorable, in a funny-but-may-haunt-your-dreams kind of way. That is the sketch’s real name, and it’s potentially a bit spoilerish, but probably not. The conclusions you would draw from the title alone might be in the ballpark, but the devil is in the details.

Irritable Vowel Syndrome: This is probably the trickiest one in the bunch. It’s got two significantly different versions–the emotions are the same in each one but the setting and the specific points the characters make are not even close. We’re going to try to combine the best bits of both, while eliminating the jokes about typography and Welsh. (There are jokes about typography and Welsh in one of the versions. Both are funny and wholly legitimate, but they may lose some humor for people without the relatively obscure background knowledge.)

and Little Louise: A favorite of ours, although it’s actually a holdover that was written for Awkward Turtle but didn’t get used there. And good thing, too, because Jay has turned it into a singing, dancing, inappropriate-dramatic-monologuing, whoring-for-lollypops spectacular.

It’s not true that blondes have more fun. Evil has more fun. Sure, great things can be done by good people, but it’s the bad guys who enjoy life and look good doing it.

Front for Evil, the second sketch comedy show from Three Legged Race, explores evil in all its forms. At least, the enjoyable ones, like pirates, rehab, Hollywood agents, and alcohol. Not evil like racism. We’re opposed to that.

Directed by Jay Steigmann of Back Table Productions, Front for Evil opens August 7 at the Apollo Studio Theater, 2540 N. Lincoln. It runs Friday nights at 10:30 through September 25, and tickets are $12.

Welcome to Chicago sketch comedy troupe Three Legged Race’s web site. Watch here for information about our shows, videos, and other entertaining stuff. (Don’t want to have to come back all the time? The site is built in WordPress, which means there’s an RSS feed to subscribe to.) Enjoy!